Hunger
by She Ain't No Blondie
Summary: Because sugar can’t cure everything.
1. Sweetened Milk

**Title: ** Hunger

**Summary: **Because sugar can't cure _everything_.

**Spoilers: **Start with the mage origin and make your way through the rest of the game.

**Notes:** There's something interesting about _what ifs_.

*

If I could have just a taste of you

Would I be addicted?

If I could have just a touch of you

Could I tear myself away?

--Lorna Vallings, _Taste_

*

**Chapter One: Sweetened Milk**

Alistair's weakness is sugar, sweetness. He laces everything with sugar or honey or syrup, even his soup. He accepts tea, but puts spoonful after spoonful of sugar in it, then drowns the rest of it with sweetened milk. When he finds out that Leliana has hard sweets from Orlais, he trades his favorite amulet for it.

When he dies, Amell takes over his vice. She always carries a bag of sugar and a jar of honey in her pack. She hates the way her teeth ache when she drinks her tea, but she still adds milk. She eats so much of it that she thinks her blood must taste like raw sugar at this point, and she's surprised that she hasn't attracted the entire remaining Darkspawn population (not to mention a vampire or two).

They say that time heals all wounds, but it's a lie, and, in truth, Amell likes to interchange "time" with "sweets," because she hopes that they'll all go to her hips and her thighs, and she'll be too unfit to be a Grey Warden—too out of shape to be something that resembles Alistair's pride.

"It wouldn't matter," Leliana says, as Amell carefully chooses some chocolates from a confectionary. "You're a mage. Any extra weight would be hidden by your robes."

Zevran shrugs. "Eh, I like a girl who has something to sway when she walks away."

But trying to recruit new Grey Wardens is exercise, and she actually _loses_ weight, which is frustrating, and Amell goes on a sugar diet, dipping her fruits in chocolate and drizzling her toast with honey.

It makes her sick, but so does Alistair's death.

They say you can always go home, but Amell has no home. Yes, there is the Tower, but it's caving in on itself. There's hardly a gaggle of mages left, and Wynn has her hands full without having to worry about one moody Grey Warden who is trying to eat herself to death.

She's in a town south of Redcliffe when she hears the words: mage-killer. There's a dough in front of her, fried, laced with sugar, and it's delicious, but the two men next to her talk loudly.

Amell stopped wearing her robes. They felt like chains, dragging her down. A reminder her magic could not fix everything: not Alistair, not what he left of her. Instead she's dressed in light, leather armor, a gift from Zevran.

She doesn't look like a mage, but she _is_. If anything, she supposes, her staff gives it away, like a beacon.

"They say he's a Templar," one man says. "But—Templars don't just go around like…like mercenaries, do they?"

"Perhaps he's a Grey Warden?" another says. "They've been building up. Maybe one of them went crazy."

Amell twitches. She would know if a Grey Warden was going around killing mages.

The two men are looking at her, and Amell sighs. They know. Whether she's a mage or a Grey Warden, they know something. Next time she'll leave her staff in a ditch. In the middle of a forest. With a terminate infestation.

She leaves money on the counter, takes one last bite of her food, and gets up.

This was what living was like. It was staying behind. It was letting the only man you ever loved sacrifice himself so you could live. Why? Because you became a Warden three months later than he did?

_Because you're a coward, and you _cried.

Amell closes her eyes and whispers to herself, words of magic roll of her tongue, and she feels her skin harden. Time to get rid of a mage-killer.

She's told he's staying at the town inn, a two-bedroom shack on the very edge of the map's border. She can see Redcliffe Castle from its doorstep, and she wonders if someone would give her a home there. Perhaps Bann Teagen who has eyes the color of warm caramel, and a loyalty that could rival her own.

The innkeeper has no qualms about letting her through. Rumors fly fast in a town like this, and the innkeeper doesn't want any trouble (although a gold coin or two will do nicely). Amell gives her three, since she'll bill it to the Grey Wardens anyway.

The door is unlocked, which is good, because Amell would have kicked it down anyway. A trick Alistair showed her, just exactly where to hit, even if you were wearing dainty boots. Nobody makes a good door any more, he would say.

Her breath hitches, because the room is tiny, and there's a shield by the door, and it has the Templar's crest, and it looks exactly like Alistair's did before he took Duncan's.

Electricity courses down her fingertips, and the air becomes tight. Her heart is beating with the sparks.

He's sitting in front of the fire, his back to her. But she notices the broad shoulders, weighed down by the weight of his armor. She doesn't miss the Templar's sash around his waist; she has one just like it in her pack.

"I hear you like mages," she says, because that's the only war cry you can give when you have no army.

He tenses, his fingers brushing the hilt of his sword, and then he stands up.

Amell thinks the sugar must have finally caused something in her brain to explode, because she knows him, and she wants to cry and run away and laugh all at the same time.

"Cullen," she says, settling for the obvious.

The mage-killer pales. But it's only for a second, and then he has his sword out, and she's pinned to the wall.

Electricity sparks around them, but it doesn't touch her skin. He's staring at her, and he looks lost.

So she zaps him.


	2. Caramelized Apples

**Notes:** Thank you for the reviews. I agree, it's interesting to see Cullen portrayed in a different light.

*

You can have my isolation

You can have the hate that it brings

You can have my absence of faith

You can have my everything

--Nine Inch Nails, _Closer_

*

**Chapter Two: Caramelized Apples**

Amell is panicking. She can feel it make its way up her calves, settling in her stomach, rushing up her lungs, into her head. There's a scar, six inches long, from her right shoulder, down to her breast. It _burns_.

Cullen is staring up at her. She kicks his sword away, a reflex. She knows he has the Templar training to momentarily paralyze her from using magic. But she can fry him from the inside. They're at a stalemate.

Her breaths come out in hitches. He—_he_ should not be the mage-killer, because he's nice and would sneak her warm bread rolls after Jowan ate all the good ones, and—he asked her to kill every mage left in the Tower.

"You—what are you—" she breathes, relaxes, loosens her muscles. "What are you _doing_, Cullen?"

He's staring at her. He looks sick. Like—

Like she's an illusion.

Amell supposes he feels unlucky. Demons poisoned him with fantasies of her. Then she came along. He decides to become _psychotic_ and murder mages. And, surprise!, she decides to come along _again_. Misery, meet company.

_Sorry, Cullen, the Maker hates us both_.

"You," his voice is hard, unused, "of course, it had to be you."

Amell's scar itches, and she's craving sugar again. She doesn't know what to do. She's just makes quick, irrational decisions. Yes, the witch of the wilds can join us. Yes, the elf who tried to kill me can join us. No, I will not eat any cake that has been dug up from the ground.

Quick, unreasonable, that's what she does. Alistair does—_did_—the reasoning afterwards. Once they had left town.

"I heard you've been naughty," and she's surprised by what she says. _Naughty_ means you stole cookies.

"And are you here to spank me, mage?" he retaliates.

A voice—which suspiciously sounds like Zevran's—tells Amell she's suddenly come upon the bridge of uncertainty. Which is on her way to the land of ridiculous.

"Er, _no_, not exactly what I was planning." There, the tension in her back has stopped. She can do this. It's like dancing. One, two, Chain Lighting, _die_.

Cullen laughs, and it's the laugh of a man who knows that Death has knocked on his door and is offering to host the going away party.

And then he's on his feet, and he's ridiculously _tall_, but still no sword.

Amell points her staff at him. "Don't move," she says, through gritted teeth.

"Or what?" he challenges.

This isn't the Cullen she remembers. The Cullen she knew was tall and awkward; he prayed in the mornings and twice before bed. He stuttered when he spoke. He _blushed_.

She'd sleep with Zevran if this Templar before her even remembered how to blush.

"You can't go around just…just _killing_ mages," she says. "Mages who haven't done anything wrong!" _Mages like me_.

"They're just abominations waiting to happen," he says. "I've seen it…the magic inside of them; it runs through their veins like a disease, waiting to take over. I thought…I thought they could be trained, but…." He narrows his eyes at her. "They need to die."

_You're crazy_, she wants to say. "You were hurt," she says instead. "Cullen, I understand, I was there. But—"

"No! You didn't spend hours being trapped inside your own head, feeling the demon pull out everything you had ever hoped for." Cullen looks pained.

Amell remembers Alistair mocking Cullen in the Tower. "You need help," she says softly, like talking to a scared bird. Don't approach it, or it'll flutter away and smash into a window. "Let me take you back to the Tower. Wynn is there. You remember her? She's the nice one."

And then it feels like the air is sucked out of her.

_Fuck_, she thinks.

Cullen has struck her into the wall. The back of her head _thump-thumps_ in pain.

She doesn't try to retaliate. She knows that feeling, the feeling of losing your insides; her magic is temporarily out of service.

He's going for his sword—that's all he needs against her, she's nothing but leather armor and fleshy bits—so she does what took Alistair two days to teach her—

She _tackles_ him.

It's her measly 140 pounds versus his 300 pounds of muscle and armor (and stupidity), but she knocks him off his feet. He smacks against the floor, and there's surprise on his face, but Amell is quicker.

_I'm not dying_. She has his sword, and she knows how to hold it.

(Not use it, obviously, because that would be _beneficial_, wouldn't it?)

And they're back at step one. He's on the floor and she has an advantage.

"Let me take you back," she pleads, because she doesn't want to see someone else she knows die.

He glares, the man of little words.

And then—Andraste, he has a _death wish_—he's rushing at her.

Amell swings the sword, all wrong, apparently, because it just slides out of her hand and clangs on the ground.

_Arcane bolt, arcane bolt_, she thinks, in panic, because it doesn't need much magic.

A blue wisp of light, a firefly really, shoots out of her hand and hits him, in the chest, but he's already made contact and the two of them crash to the ground.

_No air, no air_. Amell gasps for breath as his armor digs into her hips, like daggers.

He's looking at her, his eyes filled with rage and hunger.

_No air, no air_, Amell thinks because suddenly he's kissing her, and it's like he's trying to _physically_ suck the magic out of her. It's raw and desperate and probably filled with years of broken dreams.

Amell thinks she's going to die, but she returns his kisses, because they taste like caramelized apples and sugar is her new vice.


	3. Cinammon

**Notes:** Well, this is the last piece for this story. Perhaps a sequel is in the future, but I'm not sure yet.

*

Your mouth waters,

Stretched out on my bed,

your fingers are trembling,

and your heart is heavy and red

--Melissa Ferrick, _Drive_

*

**Chapter Three: Cinnamon**

When Alistair died, Leliana took the rose he gave Amell and pressed it into a small glass container. Amell wears it under her clothes, tied around her neck, hidden close to her chest.

She becomes aware that she's not wearing any clothes because Cullen takes it between his fingers, inspecting it as though it holds the answers to everything.

"Don't," she murmurs, but she's not quite sure what she's protesting.

Cullen grins, not reassuringly, but more like a predator. He traces her scar, from her shoulder to her breast.

"I thought mages could heal themselves," he says.

Amell doesn't answer him. He doesn't need to know it came from the Archdemon. A scar she earned before Alistair died, which means that somehow they're connected. Her brain doesn't understand it, but her body _feels_ it.

"You don't know how many times I've pictured this," Cullen says. And, in a way, Amell realizes he's not really talking to her.

Their foreheads are pressing together, and that's okay, because it means that Cullen is currently distracted and Amell has a few more moments of living.

"Remember the first time we met?" he asks.

He's on top of her, hands on either side of her head, pushing into the mattress beneath them—

_When_ did they make it to the bed? Ah, Amell's amazing autopilot feature.

"Greagoir's office," she says, straining to remember because she was so young. "I—I got into trouble."

It's hard to talk because between every word she breathes out, he's kissing her breasts, licking, biting. Her skin prickles into goosebumps, and they spread like wildfire.

"You were freezing butterflies," he says, and there's a brief smile. "With your friend."

She remembers now; Jowan teaching her to invoke frost. She hadn't wanted to freeze butterflies, but there was nothing else to practice on. "You walked me back to my room," she says. "Greagoir said I had to go straight to bed."

Cullen has slipped out of his armor. His skin is warm against Amell's. He dips his head down, his lips graze her neck.

"Do you want to know what the demon made me feel?" he whispers against her skin.

_No_, she wants to say, but she remains quiet. She needs to know what he'll do before she can strike back. She can feel the magic warming up in her veins again. A few more minutes and she can give him a second dose of electricity.

"We were married. You put the children to bed, and then…I had come back from work—something else, not being a Templar—and I just had to have you." He nudges her legs apart, fingers brushing her skin. "I picked you up, and we went to our room, and I—I—"

And there, right there, Amell can see that look, the look Alistair gave her when Duncan died, the look he gave her when Goldanna turned out to be a bitch—

The look he gave her when he thought they had an entire lifetime ahead of them, but they only had seconds.

There are so many similarities between them that it makes Amell hurt. Alistair could have so easily been Cullen.

And Cullen could have so easily been Alistair, maybe, if she had stayed, if she hadn't helped Jowan.

"Can I, please?" Cullen mutters.

He wants permission, Amell is aware, even though he's touching her breasts and between her legs.

Maker forgive her, but she nudges her hips into his, and he's inside of her, and—

It's like she doesn't need sugar any more. This is its own sweetness; a memory of what she and Alistair had.

But it's not Alistair.

It's a mage-killer.

"Andraste's hammer, Amell, I've wanted you for so long," Cullen says. "To be inside of you, like this, to feel your warmth. You always had that smile, I…"

She reaches up to touch him, run her fingers down his side. She reaches down, in between them, to feel him. He gasps at her touch, and he increases his thrusts.

_Think fast_, Amell thinks, but she can't. Her mind has finally given up on her, collapsed out of exertion. She's meeting Cullen's pace, and it feels like maybe she can save him.

Cullen suddenly jerks his hips, deepening in her, and it's over. Amell remembers to breathe. Something inside of her itches, and she feels desperate for a cup of tea (extra sugar, please—oh, and some sweetened milk).

But Cullen has fallen asleep, next to her, his skin still feverish, and it's probably from the shock and the stress, but Amell falls asleep, too, and she dreams of a Templar, but it isn't Cullen.

*

Amell sleeps lightly, and she immediately feels the presence in the room. She doesn't flinch, doesn't open her eyes. She listens for the footsteps, waiting for them to come in near range.

Cullen, apparently, has never had to worry about anyone murdering him in his sleep, because he is still snoring next to her.

And there, Amell takes advantage and reaches out to stop the hand from coming down on her.

"Ah, good, amor, you learned some of the things I've taught you."

Amell has never been so relieved to see Zevran in her life.

Zevran's eyes move from her naked body to Cullen's, and he smirks. "I see you've learned _many_ things, yes?"

Amell moves out of the bed, carefully. She slips on her armor.

Zevran is still watching Cullen. "I heard you were going after a mage-killer, but maybe I misunderstood."

"Shhh," she snaps. "He—we're—friends." She doesn't know why she needs to justify herself.

"Ah, I wish we were _that_ friendly," Zevran says, with a leer. "Would you like me to kill him?"

Amell jots something on a piece of parchment, and leaves it next to Cullen's sword. She has a feeling that he won't resume his mage killing, at least not without finding her first.

"Let's get out of here," Amell says. "I've been dying for an Orlaise butter pastry."

"Your wish is my command, my love."

*

Cullen wakes up, his head is pounding, and the sheets smell like Amell, like cinnamon and fresh snow. He doesn't need to get up to know that she's gone. He spends several minutes, his eyes still closed, rearranging the memories in his head. Cataloging the news ones to get rid of the old, fake ones.

He finally gets up, and it feels like he hasn't moved in weeks.

His armor is by the bed, looking tarnished, but his Templar's sash is neatly folded next to his sword. And there's a note, in hurried script.

Cullen stares at it, and smiles. Directions to the new headquarters for the Grey Wardens.

It's a promise he intends to keep.

_Thank you, Maker, for you have blessed my path. I follow Your direction. I am Your weapon, and for that I am grateful. _

**end**


End file.
